


My Best Is Enough

by tavrosroofies (troof)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: BDSM, Bondage, Consensual Kink, D/s, Embarrassment, Fluff and Smut, Japanese Rope Bondage, Light Bondage, M/M, Non-Sexual Bondage, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rope Bondage, Safe Sane and Consensual, Second-Hand Embarrassment, Shibari, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 09:46:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18092024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/troof/pseuds/tavrosroofies
Summary: Ever since he was a child, Keith's rushed into things way too fast, sometimes without giving them adequate thought. So when he learns about shibari, a way of tying people up while showing them you love them, he rushes in headfirst, and takes Shiro along too.But just because your boyfriend has one prosthetic limb doesn't mean you should give him another. Keith messes up, learns some things about safety along the way, and has some embarrassing conversations.And Shiro works with him through this, bit by bit. Because he wants to do this, after all.





	My Best Is Enough

He looks at Shiro stretched out on their bed, front down and back bowing a little where the mattress doesn't support his body, reading a book that Pidge gave him about how leadership changes when confronted with the vast environment of space. He doesn't know why Shiro's reading it; having led Voltron at a time when human space exploration was still in its infancy, he probably could have written the book himself, but Keith's told him this and Shiro just tells him that he “wants to keep an open mind.”

“What’s so bad about keeping an open mind, anyways?”

“Nothing. I just--see, you’re turning it on me,” Keith says, pointing a finger in Shiro’s direction. “That’s not what I said was bad.”

“What did you say was bad, then?”

Shiro thinks he can smile at him, all innocent, then not be at fault when Keith flops down on the pillow to bury his groans and his frustrated face when he’s having a minor tantrum. In what world is _reading_ more interesting than having sex? 

Keith peeks his eyes out over the pillow and sneaks his fingers over to Shiro’s thigh where he can tiptoe them up the seam. Shiro shifts his thigh and rubs circles on Keith’s back condescendingly. At least, he thinks it’s that way. 

“Shirooo,” he groans. But Shiro keeps rubbing his back and reading his book, and Keith’s eyes narrow. 

Well, there’s a reason he wouldn’t be interested in sex. Last week, they had kind of a disaster, born from Keith trying to spice things up and not doing adequate research. He _thought_ he researched everything adequately, talked to Shiro about it, and took the necessary precautions, but in the end, he took it too far, and it had been too much, too fast. 

He thought, how hard could it be to tie a person up with rope? Hard, it turns out. 

_Very hard_ , apparently. But to not be interested anymore?

A sigh. He..really messed up. Keith's thinking about sex, and why people want the things they want. He wants to tie Shiro in intricate knots that take hours to do. Wants to tie him in uncomfortable positions, nothing painful but still unique enough to showcase his beauty. He wants to care for him as the rope slides over his skin, and feel him breathe and shudder. Shiro used to say that he wanted it, too. But Keith hasn’t earned that, and he’s painfully aware.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Keith says, and Shiro’s watching him now. “I know I said it before, and I’ll say it again--”

Shiro’s nose scrunches up in confusion, and it’s even cuter when paired with the glasses he’s wearing. “Wait, Keith, why are you sorry?”

“For last night, you know, when we tried with the ropes--I think I cut off circulation to your left wrist. And I understand if you aren’t comfortable having sex right now--”

Shiro drops his book and the pages fan out against the bed, obscuring the spot Shiro was marking for himself with his thumb, but he isn’t concerned with that now, he’s concerned about Keith. He rushes over and puts his hand on Keith’s shoulder, rolling him over so he’s facing Shiro now when he talks to him. “Whoa, whoa, Keith! That’s not it at all! I would love to have sex with you. All the time. Even now. I just...got a little caught up in my reading.”

“...Caught up in your _reading_?” Keith repeats, incredulous.

“It’s a really good book.” Keith pouts and starts to sit up, and Shiro tucks him in to his shoulder. “Hey, you’re still upset about that?” Keith thinks back to what it was like to realize that he was putting Shiro in pain, and on top of that, he didn’t even know what knots he was tying when it came down to it. At first, he had something recognizable, but as he got more into it, it was like a maze crossing over itself, and then Shiro stopped being his focus. Shiro, whom he knows to have too much self-restraint to speak up about these things. 

He tucks his face into Shiro’s shoulder and lets his bangs fall in his face. Shiro squeezes him in tight, and when he surfaces, he says, “Yes. You deserve better.”

“Yes, but we’re still figuring this out, right? No one said it was going to be easy.” 

“No one said it was going to be this hard, either.”

“Well, most couples’ ideas of ‘kinky’ don’t go beyond buying lingerie or a dildo or something. If you want to string up my entire body, it’s going to take practice.”

But it looked so easy. And then he remembers: this is what Shiro has been trying to tell him all along.“Oh my god, Shiro, don’t say it.”

“Say what? Oh, right! ‘ _Patience_ \--’” Keith clamps a hand over his mouth and laughs when Shiro uses his lips to bite at his fingers. Then Shiro’s pulling his hand off and pressing kisses to his palm, up his wrist, and that’s--it’s almost too much for him. 

“‘ _Yields focus_ ,’” he says, finishing, and pulling his hand away. He knows these words by heart, but they’ve been a little hard to internalize. “I still think it would be awhile before I would do that to you again, though.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to hurt you!”

“You won’t. Listen to me, Keith, you won’t. I know you care about me, and last time might have gone a little awry, but did you hurt me? No. In the end, I know you’re always watching out.” In the end, Keith knows he took to long to notice, but in the end--he was listening to Shiro, right? And he knows not to do it again? 

“I guess so. But what do you suppose we do?”

“Hm.” Shiro purses his lips and Keith’s eyes are drawn there, how they’re pink and plush even though he’s never seen him use chapstick. “I have an idea. Why don’t you tie me up while I read?”

“While you read?”

“Yeah. It doesn’t have to be full-body, you could just tie my arm or something. This way, there isn’t any pressure to not make a mistake, and I’ll be able to stop you if I feel uncomfortable.”

“Couldn’t you stop me if we were doing this normally?”

“No distractions.” Shiro’s eyes stray down to Keith’s lap where he’s starting to grow hard, and he thinks, _oh_. This is a lot more complicated than he once thought. 

Keith smiles, walks over to the sliding door of the closet, and pulls a thin coil of nylon rope from off the shelf. Still smiling, he brings it back to Shiro and runs it through his hands appreciatively. Shiro's eyes flare in obvious interest, but keeps his face neutral while Keith tries not to betray his excitement.

“So can I do your left hand, or your right…?” The way Shiro was reading, he was propped up by his left elbow and turning pages with his right hand. But for Keith, he shifts his weight to his prosthetic and offers Keith his left arm. “Do you want me to roll my sleeve up?” 

Shiro's currently in a white blazer made of see-through material that buttons up around the cuffs. The front's starched, but the material around the sleeves is loose enough to wrinkle.

“Uh, no, this should be good,” Keith says, swallowing, and tugging down the material where it inches up towards his elbow and trying to smooth it out. He sits cross-legged next to Shiro so he has contact where his knee touches his back, and he pulls his arm over his lap so his wrist can dangle in the space between.

“Let's see…” Shiro goes back to reading. Keith scrolls through the instructions for the knots on his tablet, but he knows this. It’s all a matter of getting into the right mind. He squints at the screen, trying to see which ends go where, then starts bravely wrapping rope around Shiro's wrist. 

The main thing is making sure the rope isn’t too tight. Shiro isn’t going to go anywhere, he tells himself, it’s just--calm. It goes fine for a while. He can slip two fingers under it, so then he makes a loop where he's supposed to and crosses over and under all the necessary pieces, and when it's done, there's a piece of rope calmly dangling off Shiro's wrist like a continuation: where does he want to go next?

Keith contents himself with loosening and reworking the knots around Shiro's wrist, turning his palm this way and that, pulling on it, and Shiro’s just reading his book. It’s boring, no doubt, but it’s--peaceful.

“Do you mind if I tie you to the bedpost?”

Shiro nods, not taking his eyes off his book, but he shifts so that his left arm is closer to the headboard. Keith takes the working end and wraps it around. He almost likes it like this, with Shiro reading his book and not paying him any attention. He doesn't feel judged like this, for his less-than-perfect knots, or how long it takes to close his eyes and access his memory to keep tying them; he can take as long as he likes, and Shiro won't know the difference.

This one gives him trouble; either he's pulling the bight through the wrong loop or he's going through the wrong side--either way, the rope keeps tangling up on him, and when he tries to pull it taut he gets nothing but a straight line. One time, he manages to secure the knot, but there's a loop sticking out that he knows isn’t supposed to be there; it's pretty conspicuous.

But he takes a deep breath and tries again. This time, he thinks that he gets it. His hard-on has subsided, but Shiro’s shifting on the bed and won’t meet Keith’s eyes. 

He watches Shiro until he looks up at Keith, and then he knows. He knows there’s no other reason Shiro’s eyes would dart away so fast. 

Gently, keeping his page, Keith takes Shiro’s book from him and places it on the nightstand. He gives Shiro a kiss, and the way Shiro leans after him like this is taunting, but he won’t let this escalate. He considers this a success, but within seconds, he’s still removing the rope from the bedpost and letting the coils fall away from Shiro’s wrist. He wraps the rope around his fingers to tidy up and shuts off the tablet. He goes back to put it in the closet, and when he returns, Shiro's lying on the bed, face-up, watching Keith.

“What’d you think?”

“That wasn’t so bad.”

Once he flips over, Keith throws himself on the bed and massages Shiro's forearm idly, kneading the skin underneath the shirt by moving his thumbs in a circular motion. There's no way he disrupted circulation with the small amount of bondage he did, but it has to be uncomfortable being tied up, even a little bit. He has to get in the habit, anyway. And Shiro cannot have been completely relaxed this whole time leaning on his right side and turning pages with his right arm. Keith gets cramps when he reads anywhere that's not at the table, back straight, with a surface to rest his book on, so it's reasonable to assume that Shiro's feeling the same way.

“How are you feeling?” Keith asks.

“Good.” 

It’s a relief. Shiro looks relaxed, and happy, and Keith revels in the fact that he’s allowed to make him feel this way. He ends up being right about Shiro's right side, so Shiro ends up face-down with Keith straddling his back, kneading at the area where his prosthetic attaches to his shoulder. He massages the muscles around his shoulder blade, and moves back to press down next to the knobs of his spine. 

If he can help it, he won’t mess up again.

\---

The common room: not Keith’s preferred hangout spot, but ironically, these days, one of the few places outside of his room that he can spend time alone. In the supply closet, he found a length of rope long enough to practice, and now he's absorbed in practicing square knots and half-hitches for something to do. Even though Lance is sitting across from him at the table.

“Where did you find time to learn shibari?” Lance asks, subtlety nonexistent. “You don’t have time to do that.” Suddenly, Keith is regretting ever telling him. They discussed it a long time ago, during one of their interstellar sleepover parties, and it has come back to haunt him so many times. Does he know why he told Lance? No. Did the absence of a rising and setting sun, the concept of earth-time, and an increasingly strong bond between the six of them and their lions skew his immediate judgment? Maybe. He doesn’t know what else to blame.

Shiro wasn't in the conversation then, but unfortunately, Lance overheard last week when he brought the idea to Shiro, so he’s basically dead meat.

“What do you mean, ‘I don’t have time?’ My time is my own.”

“Yeah, but--what if you’re having sex and we need you in your lion?”

“Then I’ll _go_ to my _lion_.”

“Sure you won’t be all ‘tied up?’” 

Keith looks up from the sheet bend he’s working on to study the blue paladin’s face. He’s serious. Absolutely serious. He wants to finish his knot, but nope. He’s had enough. He’s going back to his room.

“Wait! Keith, I didn’t mean it!” Lance shouts after him as he stalks off to go to his room.

“You didn’t intend a pun?”

“No, I did! I just mean...come talk to me? Please. I haven’t talked to you in a while!”

Keith looks back at him, and...he’s serious? He’s serious. All right, he’ll see what Lance wants. He comes back to sit at the table, but he really wants to focus on getting these knots down, and Lance isn’t going to be his primary concern.

“Mourn my sense of humor?” Lance pleads, looking up at him hopefully.

“Okay, okay, fine, you’re forgiven.” They sit in silence for a while, Lance watching Keith pull on his knots, when finally, Keith asks what’s up. “Did you need something?”

Lance looks away. “I was just wondering what was up with you. You’re tying up Shiro, right? So, how many knots can you tie?” Keith neither confirms nor denies this accusation. But the second part, he can work with. It’s almost nice to have someone to explain it to, actually.

Keith thinks back, mentally counts on his fingers since his fingers are otherwise engaged. “Five or six. But it's not about individual knots. You can use the same knots to tie the body in different positions, and use one knot to tie off a hitch or a bunch of knots to make a harness; you're usually working with one piece of rope. One knot flows into the next. It's a lot.”

“It sounds like it. Is Shiro's really going to be okay with you hanging him from the ceiling?”

“Whoa, what? We are _not_ going there.”

“Well, where can we go? We’re teammates. I tell you most of everything, so I figured you could tell me.”

“I don’t want to _know_ most of everything. For example, did you ever do anything like this with Allura?”

“Anything like _what_ with Allura?” The singsong voice comes and visits them from down the hallway. And then their princess and leader is standing behind Lance, rubbing his shoulders like Keith sometimes does to Shiro when they’re in private and not on mission. Keith appreciates her, but right now, all he can think is _not her, too_.

“You mean, like, bondage with Allura?” Lance whispers across the table, and Keith plants his head firmly down on the desk. This isn’t happening to him.

He hears some whispering between the two of them, and some phrases tossed around, among them the words _none of your business_ and _I just want to help!_ and the weird side of Allura where she’s this graceful, calming being. He sees her scary side more often than not, nowadays, except when they’re in Voltron.

“Keith, do you need help?” she asks him.

“No.” 

Lance looks at Allura in disbelief, but she placates him with an arm around his shoulder, and says, “Then we’re going.”

They make to leave the table, but what the hell, this can’t get any more embarrassing than it is now. “Wait.” Allura stops and raises an eyebrow, and Lance’s eyes grow wide. “I do need help.” And it kills him to admit it. It kills him, it kills him, it kills him, but Shiro has always taught him it’s not weakness to accept help, and he’s the one he’s doing this for: Shiro. 

“So I wanted to get closer to Shiro. I wanted to get closer by having sex with him while I tie him up. But I tried it last night, and I hurt him. He says it’s fine, but it isn’t. I don’t want it to happen again.”

“Then don’t tie him up,” Lance says. Allura shoots a glare at him and holds a finger up in warning. 

Keith continues. “I'm especially worried because this whole thing--the methods of tying--were developed based on the way people used to restrain prisoners. Now I never saw those methods used among the Galra when I spent time with the Blades, but it's hard to know for sure.” Keith lowers his voice. “I don't know everything they did to him, during Kerberos. And I don't want to ask.”

“Does he ever talk about it?”

“Sometimes, when he's ready. But I don't want to push.”

“You need to push.” Keith raises his eyebrows. “I know it’s uncomfortable, but these are things you need to ask. For his comfort and yours.”

He’s not looking forward to the conversation, but Keith realizes that that’s the thing he needed to hear. 

\---

They’re sitting together on the steps behind the Garrison in the cold desert air. He has the rope laid across his lap, but Shiro pulls the rope out of his hands, placing it somewhere next to him on the other side of his hips. He slings an arm around Keith's shoulder, and Keith leans into him. He loves being encompassed in Shiro's warmth. And he's in a sweatshirt now, his Garrison hoodie from when he was a cadet. It's much more comfy and cozy than his uniform. “The sunset looks nice.” 

Keith thinks so too, from what he can see without staring at it, the pink clouds from dust in the atmosphere stretching over the sands of the desert. His boots make imprints in the dust next to Shiro's. If he scoots his left foot over, he can create a pile of dirt that touches Shiro's. 

But he doesn’t. Instead, he puts his face in his hands and says, “I just had the most embarrassing conversation.”

“Really? What about?”

He supposes it’s less embarrassing talking to Shiro about it, considering the conversation was about Shiro, but it’s reliving the experience he doesn’t relish. 

“Lance found out about our sex life. I’m pretty sure he overheard us talking in the halls. He tried to ‘help,’ I don’t know what with. And then Allura came, and it was..it was a dumpster fire. Can you imagine?” He buries his face in Shiro's hoodie and snuggles into his chest. From Shiro’s groan and mortified expression, he assumes he can imagine pretty well. 

“Can we just stay here until they forget?”

“Yeah, except I’m pretty sure Alteans have lifelong memories.”

Shiro smirks, but hides his face in Keith’s hair. The sun's still got plenty of time to go down. It's bright. He mumbles something into Shiro’s sweatshirt, but Shiro pulls him back, saying that he’s buried too deep for Shiro to hear him.

“It’s okay. They weren’t words anyways.” Keith spits out a mouthful of fabric and moves back.  
Suddenly both of them are exhaling in a whoosh of laughter, and Shiro throws himself back on the steps so he’s on his back and looking up at the sky. As much as he’d love to do the same thing, Keith takes the opportunity to just look at Shiro, and take this moment in. They calm down, and idly, he traces the iron-on orange and black hexagon with his pointer finger. “Allura did say something, though.”

Shiro catches his finger and stops his movement. “What’d she say?”

“She said I should ask you if the Galra ever did anything like this to you before. Put you in certain positions while you were in captivity so I can avoid them. Things like that.”

“Allura asked that?”

“No. Well, I asked her if I should ask that, and she said I definitely should.”

There’s a pause where they do nothing but watch the clouds go by. Shiro sits back up, and brushes the sand off the back of his sweatshirt. Shiro doesn’t like to talk about this, even with Keith, even though he tells him every time it’s not a burden. It’s no problem for him to share this with Shiro. When they’re together, shouldn’t he want everything? All of his demons, no matter how nasty they are? 

“They didn’t tie me up,” Shiro says, finally, “not with rope. There were handcuffs. Most of them you’ve seen, I think we saw a lot of them during our time in space. Just--tables. I think I would like to not be tied to tables, strapped down and unable to do anything.”

“How about beds?”

“I think beds are fine. Just because it’s you.” This is the important question, but because Shiro hesitated, Keith’s going to have to take it slow if they decide to go this far. “Is that your only concern?”

“For now, yes. I just had to get it out of the way.”

“That’s understandable.”

Shiro sits with his hands clasped together, elbows on his knees. No longer the smiling, perpetually optimistic leader and boyfriend that he knows. He’s somewhere else, even though they’re both watching the sunset together and this is a man whose soul he knows is brighter than the sun. 

It hurts, seeing Shiro like this, especially knowing he made him like that, but it’s necessary for what they’re going to do. “Thank you, Shiro,” Keith says, standing up and placing a kiss on that pure white crown that used to look so different. “I know it isn’t easy, what you give to me.”

Maybe that’s what a dom would do. He doesn’t know. He hopes. 

Then Shiro says, “How about you and I do a scene tonight? One where you tie me up, and I call you ‘sir?’” and Keith _really_ hopes.

“Call _me_ ‘sir?’”

Keith's breath catches, and he leans his weight on Shiro, as much as he can in this position. Shiro supports him as much as he can without leaning back. He’s Keith’s pillar. It's getting cool; they're in the shadow of the robots and the sun is only a hair away from dipping below the horizon. 

The way Shiro’s looking at him, it makes him never want to let him down. He would die for this man. Again. Then he realizes he still hasn't answered the question.

“I don’t think I’m ready.”

He remembers the time shortly after they started having sex that Shiro laid him out on the bed and kissed _everything_. Telling him how beautiful he was, how lucky he was to have him. He was embarrassingly hard, but Shiro didn't tease him about it, just feathered kisses up the shaft and looked at him like he was the most precious thing in the world. His hands left burning trails where they roamed over Keith's skin, and any place that tickled, he lingered. Keith thought about it for days afterward and if he concentrated enough, he could still feel caresses ghost over his skin. 

Sometimes he can hear Shiro's heart beat through his clothes if he listens closely enough, but if any dials were hooked up to Keith's heart right now, just from the thought of that, the needle would be off the charts. It's overwhelming. He can’t measure up to that. 

“That’s okay. We can do it some other time.”

“Some other time sounds good.” What Keith needs is a break from all this discussion about bondage. Between Shiro and their session this morning, to the talk with Allura--it’s just been too much. Although he supposes the session with Shiro was more soothing than it was stressful, but the point is, he’s been carrying around this rope all day and he needs to separate from it.

Shiro pushes himself up and offers Keith his hand once he's finally standing. Keith lets Shiro pull him up and brushes the dirt off the back of his jeans. Shiro leans down to Keith’s ear. “You know it doesn’t have to be perfect, right?” he asks.

“I know.”

Once they go in off the steps, he wipes the dirt off his boots at the door, and Shiro follows close behind. The air-conditioned chill of the hallway envelops them, and they’re back where they started.


End file.
